Sam and the Firefly pencil

 Sam and the Firefly is one of Jack's favorite books.  He especially likes the page where the mischievous firefly writes over the hot dog man's sign to read "COLD Dogs".

I made this light up pencil for Jack before he entered first grade.  When he holds it correctly to write, the firefly's led blinks in different colors.  Of course, Jack had to have fun.  He immediately started making Pizza Hut signs, which he crossed out and changed to read "Pizza COLD". 



To begin, I used some wire to make an armature.  The firefly's arms and legs are quite thin.  As a bonus, they are now pose-able.   The wire is curled in not just to make hands and feet, but also to prevent injury by pokey wires.  I left some wire dangling from the bottom so I could hot glue or jam the wires into the pencil.  I didn't really have a plan.  :)  Then I wrapped the armature in tinfoil strips to reduce the amount of polymer clay needed for the sculpture.

I mixed equal parts of blue and green Sculpey Bake and Bend polymer clay with a little black to get the face color, and I used black for his body and hands.  I conditioned the clay, rolled it flat, and wrapped the foil body with clay.  Next I added features like his black smile, two white oval eyes with two little circular pupils, black eyebrows, black hands and feet (why did I forget the feet?),and two rather stubby antenna.  The antenna did not have armature wires, so they needed to be stubby to stay on the sculpture.  They were necessary for expression.  I baked the sculpture according to the manufacturer instructions.   

For the electronics portion of this project, I took apart a light up rubber ducky which stopped blinking.  There were two touch points on the bottom of the duck, which I later extended with speaker wires so that when Jack holds the pen low near the tip, he is closing the circuit.  This duck's water tight design left me no way to change the batteries; an autopsy was my only recourse!  On the tray with the blue duck I gathered different large translucent marker caps.  I was trying to find a clear plastic container that I could turn into the led holder.  I could have used any one of them.  I settled on a plastic tube from a marble maze construction toy. 
I hot glued the whole thing together and taped the wires to the pencil.  Check out my YouTube video below for more info and to watch Jack writing with it.  It is a heavy pen, but I made it with stuff I found around the house.  If I were to redesign it, I think I would not use the plastic housing.  Perhaps I would bake a blinking led directly into the clay.

 

 

Motion Sensor + Bubble Machine!

Motion Sensitive Bubble Machine!

I make the kids dance for bubbles!  With no solder, I used littleBits and a 5 volt relay to hack my battery powered bubble machine.  littleBits connect together magnetically, and I used a hacked wire bit and a breadboard for the relay.

 The basic circuit is power + motion trigger + timeout + led + hacked wire bit + 5 volt relay + bubble machine

This is what my hacked wire bit looked like when I connected it to the relay.  I soldered three wires to what littleBits calls a "branch" bit so that I can connect them to any breadboard.  I taped off the red voltage wire (not to be used here) and plugged in the middle signal wire and bottom ground wire into the relay.  Another option could have been to actually cut a "wire" bit and use those wires to insert into the breadboard.  That would have made this hack completely solder free, which is important for those who don't like to handle a hot soldering iron.  I actually burnt my hand in December before I had the right equipment; "helping hands" really do help!

For the other half of the relay I needed to access two wires that I disconnected from the bubble machine switch.  First I drilled a hole close to the switch at the top of the bubble machine.  There I cut the two switch wires.  Further down I drilled another hole so I could pull the wires through.  Of course I removed the bubble machine batteries while I was cutting and pulling wires - only to put them back in when the circuit was assembled.  Then I connected those two wires to the relay with alligator clip wires and I wrapped the alligator clips with black electrical tape to prevent a short. 

Finally I covered the littleBits with plastic wrap so bubbles won't get them wet.  If the motion trigger is a tad too sensitive, you can cover it with duct tape or craft materials.  The littleBits website has tips and tricks on how to adjust the motion trigger sensitivity and direction.

I haven't put this project in a project box, but maybe I should?  I entered this project into two instructables contests, and a clean presentation in a box could make the difference.  Maybe I'll do that...

Hack a Toy - Dancing Bear!

Let's Hack a Toy!  

When an unsuspecting person turns the lights on or off this little guy will do a song and dance.  We're using DIY littleBits, but you can use any switch or circuit that suits your needs, like littleBits modules.  This works with any dancing bear type toy that starts and stops when you press a button.